


One Last Song

by skele_smol



Series: Into the Minerva-verse [2]
Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Break Up, Clementine is best girlfriend, Emotions, Everyone is much much older, F/F, Long-term Clementine/Violet, Messy, Minnie is in a band, Minnie is stupid and needs a hug, Past Minerva/Violet (Walking Dead: Done Running), Reconciliation, Sophie is best sister/mom, Violet is also stupid and needs a hug, tropey but fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:26:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24725233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skele_smol/pseuds/skele_smol
Summary: The house lights come up. The transitory brightness chasing smudges of watercolour purples over Minerva’s shimmering skin, highlighting her striking features as the performer plucks the microphone from the stand. Her hips roll sensually as she saunters toward the edge of the stage. Her steps touched by song, the melody of her voice still lingering in the air. She inhales. In through her nose, feeling how her lungs inflate- just as before. And her thick lashes, thickened again with mascara, part to reveal ocean-blue eyes touched by storm clouds.And as her lips, full and pouting and stained blood red, part- her eyes slide, caught by a flicker of movement and a flash of palest gold in her peripherals, stealing her breath and stalling her thoughts.Minerva has regrets and now has the chance to make things right, if she wishes to face up to her mistakes.
Relationships: Clementine/Violet (Walking Dead: Done Running), Past Violet/Minerva - Relationship
Series: Into the Minerva-verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798459
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	One Last Song

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I know I have numerous other things to be working on... and I will. Just, right now I really wanna do something that means a lot to me and this is kinda a bit of a vent thing for me right now. This is a 2 part fic, the next part along with other chapters for other fics will be coming in the next 2-7 weeks. July is around the corner and with it comes Camp Nano so I'll be cramming those words in soon.
> 
> This first chapter is told by mixing memories (the italics) with current days/situations (standard text). It's supposed to disorientate and put you into Minerva's mindset.
> 
> I hope you find it fun and an enjoyable read. Chapter two; the final chapter, will be out in the next 2 weeks.
> 
> Kudos and comments are loved and appreciated.

One Last Song. 

Chapter:1. The World is her Stage.

The fading music pulses across her skin, an external heartbeat of sweet vibrations that stirs and excites the sensitive, sweat-damp hairs at the nape of her neck. And the lyrics that she sings are her soul; passionate, poetic words that she could sing forever. The purple lights that bathe her, dance across the stage; catching her edges in a violet flame, scattering little starbursts of reds and blues with every bead of perspiration that splinters it. The lyrics to her final set swim through her thoughts, a wakeful dream. The melody behind her rises, swelling and relaxing her, enabling the song to rise into her throat as easily as her breath fills her lungs.

Minerva parts her lashes and alters her stance. Her eyes sweeping over the crowded nightclub as she cradles the microphone in her hands. The music begins and the rhythm flows through her veins. Her fingers lace together, the pad of her left index taps against the middle knuckle of the right, counting the beat until she is to sing. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply. In through her nose, feels how her lungs inflate; tastes the excitement that buzzes through her audience, holds it for a moment before releasing.

She’s ready.

Her fingers still as she opens her mouth, unleashing the melody of her soul. Her voice is her instrument. She has sung every single day since she was six years old and now, she can't live a single day without it. It's all she has ever wanted. It’s all she needs. Her music is in everything that she sees. In the very air that she breathes. Music is her life and her life is music.

Her voice soars above the roar of the crowd. A majestic phoenix of rhythm and passion. It wheels and dips, the melodies tell her stories, weaving their magic into the thoughts of those who hear it. The crescendo swells and her voice pushes higher and higher, reaching new celestial heights. It electrifies the air and her audience is spellbound. Eyes on her, only her. Her mouth curves as she hears her words calling back to her. Their voices are her choir, her lyrics their hymns. She takes her breath down into her guts, feels the power gathering there and then she unleashes it all into the final words of her songs coda.

For a heartbeat, there is a silence beneath the still humming guitar strings and the reverberations of the drummer’s cymbals. And then the crowd roars and their feet stomp, and all Minerva can hear is the chant of her nickname _‘Minnie. Minnie. Minnie’_ keeping time with the throbbing of her pulse.

She’s exhausted. Her skin is glossy with the shine of her sweat, her knees feel weak and her throat burns, but the rush she feels is exhilarating.

Euphoric.

The house lights come up. The transitory brightness chasing smudges of watercolour purples over Minerva’s shimmering skin, highlighting her striking features as the performer plucks the microphone from the stand. Her hips roll sensually as she saunters toward the edge of the stage. Her steps touched by song, the melody of her voice still lingering in the air. She inhales. In through her nose, feeling how her lungs inflate- just as before. And her thick lashes, thickened again with mascara, part to reveal ocean-blue eyes touched by storm clouds.

And as her lips, full and pouting and stained blood red, part- her eyes slide, caught by a flicker of movement and a flash of palest gold in her peripherals, stealing her breath and stalling her thoughts.

_“We made it, Vi.” Minerva -a much younger Minerva- squeals as she wraps her arms around another girl’s neck, burying her face in familiar scents and hiding her tears of delight in comforting warmth. “Devil in the Hallway finally landed their first gig.”_

_“I knew you would, Min.” The warmth and fondness in the smokey tones bring with it a rise of goose flesh along the redhead’s arms. Long, slender fingers comb through the stylishly choppy bangs, teasing them as they fall leftwards. Then short nails rasp over the shorn down right side, the intimate touches sending shivers through Minerva’s blood and alighting her nerves with scorching heat. “Your voice is beautiful and your songs are amazing. I’m so proud of you."_

_“You’ll come watch me, right Vi?” Minerva threads her own fingers into silken strands of platinum blonde and loses herself in eyes coloured with the hues of new spring growth. Greens that are bright and soft, bold and delicate, all at once. Eyes that are warm and loving and so achingly devoted to her that she knows the answer already. “I really want you there.”_

_“I’ll be there, Minnie. Right in the front. Always.”_

She’s lithe and graceful and Minerva is entranced. Ensnared by familiar delicate angles and gentle curves. All wrapped up in skin-tight ripped jeans and one of their newer band shirts, a cropped cotton halter over see-through body. Decorated with the band’s logo cutting sharply over her breasts and her arms covered by a simple denim vest.

And Minerva just can’t seem to stop herself from staring.

_Minerva’s hands push themselves beneath heavy fabric. Curling around small shoulders as the soft leather jacket -hers, but it may as well be the blonde’s for all the times she’s stolen it to wear- slides down slim limbs to gather at the bend in her elbows. The girl’s hands are already fumbling with Minerva’s belt and her synapses feel as though they are on fire. Her heart is racing, ricocheting off of her ribs as adrenaline surges through her heated blood._

_“They liked us!” Her hair is a mess, plastered down with sweat and she feels high on the endorphins storming in her blood. As Minerva’s eyes glitter and shine, like fire through ice, her voice comes in quick, halting pants as sharp little teeth tug at her kiss bitten lips. “Vi, did you hear them out there? They really liked how we sounded. They liked my music.”_

_“I heard. But, you’re wrong. They didn’t like you.” She blinks as the hands that had been tugging her belt free come up to cup her cheeks. Watching as the equally kiss stung mouth on the other girl tilts into a grin as she suddenly drops her ass down and sits herself heavily atop the redhead’s lap. “They loved you, Min. They fucking loved you.” She yanks her arms free of the jacket still bunched at her elbows and tosses it aside before her shirt and bra follow. Wrapping her arms around Minerva’s neck and kissing her deeply as she murmurs. “Just like I do.”_

Minerva’s lips tremble, she can’t remember her lines for the wrap-up. The words drift listlessly in her thoughts only to scatter whenever she attempts to reach for them, taking flight like skittish songbirds. Her eyes, still fixated on the blonde in the audience, swim with a watery swell of emotion. She can’t seem to remember how to breathe and her heart aches as her once wide, wide infinite world shrivels down until all that remain are her memories. Memories of herself and _her._

_Minerva sighs heavily through her nose, the pen in her hand a weapon of her temper as she whips it through the air. A cutting blade that bounces off the door and rolls to a stop beneath the bed. With one source of her ire disposed of the young women turns her attention to the second. Ripping the page from her notebook she brutally mangles it between her fingers, destroying it with her passion until that too is flung away, taking with it the slide of eyes of crystalline green._

_“Having some trouble there, Min?”_

_Minerva pushes her face into her hands with a huff. Pointedly ignoring the musical lilt drifting from her lover seated cross-legged on her bed as she drags her palms down her face and laces her fingers behind her neck. Seeing but ignoring how a pen of her own dances between the other girl’s nimble fingers and how a wide fan of textbooks and papers surround her; her own studies interrupted by Minerva’s creative tantrum._

_She sighs as the blonde shuffles off of the mattress and plucks the crumpled ball from the floor. Slants a scowl toward her love as she hears those gentle fingers -the same ones that always touch her so tenderly- tease apart the folds and smooth over the wrinkles in the sheet. Hangs her head as the gentle murmurings of a bluesy voice breathes life into the scrawlings etched there. She hears it all. The punctuation, the prose, the rhythm and rhyme. The mistakes, the banality, the arrhythmic and monotonous._

_Minerva feels the soft panic rise behind her ribs as socked feet carry the blonde nearer. Her intestines writhe and her guts twist in a broiling vortex of anxiety and nerves and nausea as she feels the girl settle beside her, the smaller of the two tucking herself tight against her side._

_“It’s good, Min.” The redhead blinks owlishly as the wrinkled paper is pushed gently back into her hands, and tenses as soft lips touch her cheek. “Really good.”_

_Minerva snorts. “It’s shit, Vi.” But with the blonde curled against her, playing with their fingers, lacing them together and admiring how perfectly they fit, Minerva can’t help but smile. “But maybe, you can help me make it perfect?”_

And then the girl looks up and Minerva bites her lip as her whole world slows down. She is beautiful. But the rapturous eyes that pull Minerva back into the room are blue, not green. Warm as crystal waters instead of ethereal flames. The blonde of her hair is of a richer gold; an indulgent waterfall of butter silk that drapes down around her shoulders. Thick with just the right hint of a wave before the ends softly curl, rather than the shorter strands, kissed by ashen hues, that had always hung forwards to hide her eyes.

Blue eyes, gold hair. A confident, sexy smile. Yes, the girl is beautiful…

_Green eyes, flaxen hair, A shy, nervous smile..._

But she’s not Violet. And she never could be.

_“I can’t, Min. I’m sorry.”_

_The redhead’s nerves are frayed as she squeezes her hands into tight fists against her thighs beneath the table. Over the last few weeks, in an attempt to calm her building anxiety, Minerva had conducted numerous elaborate scenario’s in her mind. Rationalizing out every argument she could imagine Violet might have to lobby against her invitation to tour with her. Arming herself with each counter-argument for why everything would turn out alright._

_“Grandma fell again last night.”_

_She had convinced herself that she was being responsible. Rational. Preparing herself for Violet’s answer. Preparing herself to respect her choice no matter her decision._

_“That’s twice in the last six months.” Her voice is pitched low and tight as worry takes a stranglehold on her throat. And, even though she cast her gaze to the ground, Minerva can see how Violet’s gemstone eyes darken. How the tears cling to her pale lashes and how her chin trembles. “So, I can’t just take off on her for a year and a half just to go touring with you around the country. She needs me here.”_

_But she realizes now, as she fiddles with the rings on her fingers, that all that she had convinced herself of was that she wasn’t convinced at all. That all she had managed to do had been to simply quiet her doubts long enough to shove them aside and ignore them. For so long, Violet has poured all of her warmth and support into Minerva’s dreams. So much so that Minerva has come to expect it, rely on it. So, she had never even considered that fact Violet might still tell her no._

_And it hurts her to hear the most important person in her life reject her now._

_Minerva’s temper flares in her eyes even as she blinks back the burning sting of tears gathering in the corners of her vision. “Then maybe, it’s time to start thinking about putting her in a home, Vi. She’s gonna end up in one sooner or later anyway.” She can see the hurt edge into her lover’s eyes. Warm hues turning glacial and once smiling lips tugging down. And she can feel how her heart is breaking even as a cruel sneer twists her mouth. “Does she even remember who you are anymore? You said after the last time she kept calling you by your mom’s name.”_

_She can see the anger explode in Violet’s eyes. The disgust as they narrow and glare. Seeing her as a stranger, yet worse, as her expression turns rigid, cold and hard. “That’s a really shitty thing for you to say.”_

_Minerva had never seen Violet look at her that way before. Her eyes held a deadness, a stillness, and she realizes that forgiveness isn’t an option anymore. There’s a distance between them now too. Not physically, physically neither have moved. Minerva still sits at the table in the kitchen of Violet’s grandmother’s house and Violet still stands at the kitchen counter. But, what had begun as a vague sense of unease between the lovers- a minor crack in the atmosphere, has now yawned itself into an emotional chasm._

_“Yeah?” Beneath her own anger and snarling words, Minerva can hear the tremble in her voice. She knows that Violet’s hurting and that she should stop this fight before she says something else that she doesn’t mean. But it’s just so much easier for her to hurt Violet more. Hurt her like she’s hurting herself. “Well, backing out on your promise to ‘always be there, right in the front’, is a really shitty thing for you to do. You promised you’d always support me, Vi. Don’t you think I’m gonna need you more than ever while I’m so far away from home? From my family?”_

_“So, what? You wanna take me away from mine? Do you really think that making me feel as miserable as you’re gonna be is the answer?” The blonde girl hisses. “I can’t fucking believe you, Minerva!”_

_“Me?” With each new word that’s snarled and hissed, Minerva can feel another piece of her heart breaking free. Can feel how the steady bedrock of their relationship crumbles away from beneath her feet. “I can’t believe_ **_you_ ** _, Vi! How can you do this to me? To my dream!? You know how much I want this. How hard I’ve worked for it.”_

_“How can I-?” This time when Violet looks at her all Minerva can see is nothing. An emotionless void. An unmoving gaze that is accompanied by deliberate slow breathing. Like Violet is fighting back something terrible… and losing. “How can you? I need to stay, not just for Grandma, but I'm almost done with school. And all my friends are here. Like you said, Minnie. This is your dream, not mine.”_

_“But, you promised-” Minerva’s heart thrums wildly in her chest and her thoughts fall into an endlessly repeating loop of no, no, no’s, and why now? Why now? Why? Why? Why’s? “Violet, you promised!”_

_“That was before!” Violet’s storming eyes flash. A lightning strike of indignance and anger, her pain untold. “When I thought you’d just become a local band, not signed to some big ass record label!”_

“I… uh.” As the blonde girl stares up at her with her big, blue eyes, Minerva’s voice cracks and falters. Tripping over her words, stumbling, her fraying nerves jumping all together and in all directions and she doesn’t understand why. “I-”

_Violet glares at her. Her hurt and outrage an arctic gale blowing behind her big, green eyes and Minerva is stunned by the bite in her words._

_Before? Did she even believe in her since the start?_

_She wants to ask but knowing for sure terrifies her. It draws her world in closer -far too close- and makes the air around her feel soupy and hard to breathe. It makes Minerva aware of a glossy sheen -that wasn’t there before- coating her eyes and of her thoughts as they scatter; too many short circuits inside her head to make any sense of what is happening. And all the while the only thing that pushes through is a dark little voice whispering in her ear. ‘You’re failing. It’s over. Give it up. Run away…’_

_Violet’s eyes are so different, harder and colder than she knew her eyes could be. The gentle girl she’d fallen in love with is gone and if it were anyone else Minerva would drop her gaze. But this is Violet. Her Violet. And she is as helpless as she is drawn in, desperately searching for any hint of the Violet she knows hidden beneath the Violet she doesn’t. “So, is it that you can’t come, or that you don’t want to?”_

_“What does it matter?” Violet’s eyes are wide open yet shuttered to the redhead. Reflecting everything but seeing nothing. “Whether I can’t go or don’t want to doesn’t matter, because either way, I still_ **_won’t_ ** _go with you, Minnie!”_

_If this had been an argument with anyone else, Minerva may have emerged from the fight still hopeful. Perhaps not for outright forgiveness, but at least for the beginnings of a tentative reconciliation. If it had been someone else, anyone else, who looked at her the way that Violet does now -her eyes simmering, holding total anger for the redhead- Minerva could have borne the blame and still emerged whole on the other side. Yes, it would have been painful, it would have hurt her deeply, but it would have been easier than seeing someone she loved; the one person who held her heart in their hands, locking her out._

_And now Minerva is realizing that in this fight with Violet she isn’t just fighting to be heard anymore, she’s fighting for emotional survival. So when she feels her own eyes narrow and her lips curl away from her teeth, she doesn’t try to stop it anymore. Instead, she wraps herself in her tattered feelings and coats her words in venom and ice._

_“It matters to me, Violet!” The chair that she’d been sitting in tips and falls as she surges to her feet, but she ignores it. Her sharp eyes latch onto to Violet’s startled ones as she snarls. “It matters a whole fucking lot! So you tell me, right now! Can’t go or don’t want to?”_ _  
_

_It hits Minerva hard, the heat and anger in her own voice. But it’s watching how the fight suddenly drains out of the blonde’s posture and how her eyes turn wide and pleading instead of narrow and full of temper that drives home what is happening here between them. They once had these dreams… such amazing dreams. Dreams that were vivid and brilliant and filled with passion and each other. But then Violet’s dreams changed, and now they are so very different from Minerva’s. Everything that had once been so clear and bright to her becomes muted and dull, confusing. Morphing everything that they ever had into some terrible compromise instead of something amazing._

_“Minnie, please…”_

_But she has to know and the fact that she can see how the blonde wraps her arms around herself and how her shoulders curl inwards doesn’t matter. Minerva can see how she shakes but she doesn't care. She just needs to know. “Can’t? Or don’t. Want. To?”_

_And then it comes. The five little words that ruin everything. A word for each puzzle piece that falls from Minerva’s heart, as if they no longer belong there. “I don’t want to, Minnie.”_

_“Then maybe you should stay.” Maybe this break up had happened long ago. Maybe not physically but emotionally. Maybe that’s why Minerva has felt so lonely lately. Maybe Violet_ **_was_ ** _pulling away. She hadn’t been able to make a few of Minerva’s recent gigs. Skipping so that she could study for her exams; leaving early so that she could stay overnight in the hospital after her grandmother’s first fall. All reasonable and innocent arguments for missing them, but now Minerva’s hurt and paranoia is kicking in. Flipping the script from staying home to study, into ignoring her and not caring. Turning leaving early to stay up at the hospital with her grandmother into Violet wanting to avoid her._

_She’s hurt and angry. So much so that she doesn’t want to see the relief that thaws the chill in Violet’s eyes, nor the grateful curl beginning to form on the mouth that she had kissed so sweetly only an hour ago. Instead, she hardens her own glare as her next seven words drive the final nails in the coffin of their relationship home. “Because maybe, I don’t need you anymore.”_

Suddenly the glare of the lights and the expanse of the stage is overwhelming and daunting. Anxious and confused, Minerva stands frozen in place, still staring at the girl as agitated murmurs begin to rise from her audience. Low voices and hushed, formless words mass like shoals of little fish. The mood of the people swirling around her ears in unseen currents and beneath the shifting surface of their faces.

It was like she was in a dream, her world is spinning and she just wants to sit down. She no longer sees the attractive, nameless blue-eyed blonde, but sees Violet instead. Sees how she had once smiled up at her, her green opal eyes simmering with pride. She closes her heavily painted lashes and, for a moment, everything else fades away leaving only Minerva and the Violet that she remembers. The Violet who had whispered confidence into her ear.

_“It’s your stage, Minnie. Take control. Stare them down. You’re the distraction, not them.”_

She inhales deeply. In through her nose. Feels how her lungs inflate and her ribs expand. Feels how her jumping heart beat slows and settles. This time, when the low murmurs of the crowd reach her ears- just a little louder than before, she is calmer. And, as she opens her eyes, everything unravels. Her serenity is lost as she feels that strange, sinking sensation in her chest, her heart being twisted, pulled in opposite directions as she stares. Because there, standing beside the blonde, with their fingers twining through hers and whispering sweet serenades into her ear, is another girl...

… Another brunette.

\------------------------------------------------------------------

“I can’t stop thinking about her, Soph.” With her frustration building, Minerva paces the motel room in agitated circles, steam curling in thready wisps from her shower warmed skin. If she doesn’t move, doesn’t expel the anxious energy that coils in her limbs, she swears she might explode. She takes a deep breath. She wants to scream, to shout. To have a tantrum and beat her fists against the walls as she had when she was a toddler. She wants to vent, to let it all out, but she doesn’t want to say the hurtful words that she doesn’t ever really mean anymore. “Every time I think I’m good. Like, in a good place in my own head, I see another girl. Another happy couple. And, I remember just how it badly it ended between us.”

“Breathe, Min.” Sophie sounds tired and Minerva can hear the angry fussings of her sister’s newborn humming along the line. Another reminder of the passage of time since she had left home. Another milestone that she’d missed. “You’re getting yourself worked up into a mess.”

Through the thin walls, she can hear at least two screaming matches going on in two separate rooms further along the row. At least two more relationships that might end tonight, just as messily as her own had years ago. Closing her eyes in an effort to stem the invasive memories leeching into her thoughts as she sighs through her teeth, Minervera leans her back against the cool wood of the motel room door and slithers down it to sit on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest.

_“I’m sorry, Min.” Sophie’s voice is quiet, tinny and, to Minerva, the distance between them never felt wider as her sisters sorrow crackles along the line. “Violet’s moved on. She graduated and she’s happy. Clementine seems to be really good for her.”_

_Minerva peels her sweat sodden shirt over her head and tosses it over her shoulder as she flops onto her hotel bed. A bed that’s too big. Too empty. “Happier than she was with me?”_

_The silence that buzzes between them drags on for so long that Minerva has to pull the phone from her ear to check the connection, worried that the call may have been dropped. And then, finally, Sophie quietly sighs. “Yes.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Clementine is there for her, Min.” Minerva catches the little hint of harsh emotion in her sister’s voice, the accusatory tone not quite hidden beneath the older twins usual warmth, and shivers. “When her grandma passed away, six months after you left, and when Violet was falling apart, Clementine helped her with the funeral arrangements. She listened to her and helped her through her grief._ **_You_ ** _wouldn’t even pick up the phone to her when she called to tell you. She reached out and you ignored her anyway. And why? Because she wouldn’t uproot everything for you? That’s not fair on her Minnie. In fact, that’s really fucking cruel.”_

_“I didn’t know-”_

_“Of course you didn’t, Min. But you would have if you’d just talked to her. Do you even remember what you were doing when you found out? How you found out?”_

_She does remember. Of course, she does. She’d been in bed after her second show in Seattle. The furthest away from her home state as she could be, with her face buried between the thighs of another girl she’d picked up from the bar. Another blonde. Always another blonde. Through the girl’s shaky gasps and loud cries, she had heard her phone buzz on the nightstand. Had ignored it as the screen lit up to display an unfamiliar number attached to a text._

“Of course I’m a fucking mess!” The fingers of her free hand thread through her water-logged strands as Minerva seethes. Twisting the usually bright sunset locks around her fingers and squeezing out a few fat, cold droplets that roll sluggishly down the inside of her wrist as her temper wanes just as quickly as it had flared.

“I’m sorry, Soph. I just…” Minerva doesn’t mean to be hurtful. She _never_ means to be. It’s just that, sometimes, it’s so much easier for her to be cruel in the heat of the moment. So much less complicated. But then, afterwards, when the damage is done, she is filled with regret. There have been so many times that she’s wanted to unsay things, to take back her jagged words. But she know's that that's impossible, and she is trying to learn how to be better, it’s just so infuriatingly slow. “... I miss her. I miss her so fucking much.”

“I know you are, Min.” Sophie sighs. “And I know you do.”

Pressing her head back against the door and with her voice trembling, Minerva struggles to breathe through her emotions. “Do you think… Do you think she misses me too? Like, at all?” 

She’s raw. Everything is. Raw and numb. And, although she tries, she just can’t stop the emotions from bursting in her chest... can’t stop the tears. Why? Why can she not stop crying? “Does she ever talk about me? Or does she hate me?”

For a long moment, Sophie says nothing but her colicky infant is quick to fill the silence. Her cries are loud and barking at first; full of the same hot temper as her aunt; the aunt she doesn't know and hasn't yet met, before they then turn small and snuffling, almost as though her nose is blocked. And, as Minerva sits there, listening to the soft hum of her sister’s voice as she murmurs softly a familiar lullaby to soothe her child, Minerva closes her eyes and feels her own breathing slow.

She listens still as Sophie’s humming gradually forms words, calming her daughter’s distress and swallowing the sound of a door being slowly opened and then quietly closed.

“I know that song.” The redhead whispers. With her eyes still closed, it’s easier for Minerva to imagine that the distance between them is not so vast. Easier for her to remember the feel of her sister’s arms around her shoulders and her fingers stroking her hair. Her own tears, like the baby’s, have stopped now. Leaving only their wet, tell-tale tracks streaking down her cheeks as a reminder that they were ever there at all. “Do you remember how you used to sing that to me when we were kids? Whenever I had bad dreams, you would let me sleep in your bed with you and you’d sing to me.”

“I remember,” Sophie says softly, almost wistfully. And then she laughs quietly as she adds. “I also remember you being a little bit of a brat and _pretending_ to have bad dreams sometimes too.”

Minerva feels her lips twitch into a barely-there smile. A wistful and melancholy little curl that lifts one side of her mouth just a touch higher than the other. “Yeah… I kinda was, wasn’t I?”

“Excuse me, _was?_ ” This time when Sophie’s laugh echoes through the phone, it’s louder, sweeter. Warming Minerva’s heart as easily as her teasing words warms her ears. “I’ll have you know, Minerva that as the little sister, it’s your job to always be a brat. It keeps me on my toes.”

She’s missed this. Missed hearing Sophie’s soft giggles and her warm expressions of joy. Missed the closeness of their bond, her sister’s wicked sense of humour and her sharp wit. Even before motherhood, Sophie had always been endowed with a mother’s love and endless patience. She has always been nurturing, aways with a new lesson to teach and new wisdom to impart.

Even now, as the gentle laughter fades away and exhausted as she is, she is still helping Minerve navigate her path over her own life hurdles. Holding her hand and brushing her down after every trip and stumble.

“Violet doesn’t hate you, Minnie.”

Sophie’s words were such a sudden switch in tone. So out of context from what they had been discussing that Minerva just sits there, open-mouthed but in silence. Her brain suddenly incapable of formulating thoughts other than those that simply register that she is, indeed, in shock. Then she closes her mouth and looks to her toes, dragging her teeth over her lower lip before croaking out. “She doesn’t?”

“She doesn’t,” Sophie affirms. “Violet’s hurt and she’s so, so angry at you, but she doesn’t hate you. You would know that if you hadn’t run away the moment things didn’t go the way you wanted.”

“She’s still angry at me?” With her teeth still worrying her lip, Minerva eyes her painted toenails for a moment before reaching out a hand and wrapping her fingers around one foot. “Why?”

“You broke her heart, Min. In the worst possible way. I kinda think she has the right to be mad at you for however long she wants to be, don’t you?”

“Yeah…” Wiggling her caged toes against her palm, Minerva sighs. Her discomfort quietly deflating into remorse. “She does. And I...” She swallows hard against the lump that suddenly rises into her throat. “I guess I do kinda owe her an apology.”

“You owe her more than an apology, Min. You owe her a conversation.” There’s a firmness in Sophie’s voice as she gives her sister her advice. “You owe her an explanation as to why you walked out on her. You owe her the truth about why you couldn’t bear the idea of being in the same room as her long enough to see your twin and your best friend get married. You owe her the truth about why you missed the birth of your niece. And you need to own up to the fact that you were such a coward that her new girlfriend had to take it upon herself to text you the news that you destroyed her when you missed her grandmother’s funeral, all because you were dodging her calls.” 

Minerva lowers her head as shame creeps into her cheeks. Pressing her eyes into the backs of her knees as she sniffles softly. She still remembers that text. The words are still emblazoned into her thoughts.

_\- Hey. Sorry to be that weirdo, randomly texting you out of the blue, but my name is Clementine. You don’t know me, but I know you. Well, I know about you anyway. I know you used to be my girlfriend, Violet’s whole world once and it’s because of that that I thought you should know that her grandmother passed away last Christmas. Vi tried to get ahold of you, but couldn’t. So I’m doing this for her. She wanted you there, Minerva, for the funeral.-_

“That woman adored you, Minnie. That’s why Violet wanted you there.” Sophie continues. “And Violet loved you, too. She loved you so much. But you’ve been running away from her for so long now; _six years,_ and now she doesn’t think that you ever felt the same way for her as she did for you.”

Minerva almost laughs as the dam breaks, but not because she finds anything being said to her to be remotely funny, but because she is disgusted by her own behaviour. Mortified, as she finally faces the cruelties she had inflicted on not only Violet, but on her friends too, and on Sophie herself.

“I know, Soph! I know that I fucked up!” Minerva wails. Sniffling and sobbing and gasping out words as she snatches shaking breaths between them. It dawns on her then. Why she had left the way that she did. With her leaving somebody who loved her, despite her many faults, heartbroken in her ailing guardian’s kitchen. Why she stopped up her ears to the sobbing cries of her name and the desperate pleas for her to stay and talk it out even as she slammed the door shut on Violet- both metaphorically and physically. She knows now that when she left her she did so out of fear. The fear of what happened next actually happening. “And I know that I fucked everything up even worse by leaving and not trying to fix things. But I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. I still am and I still don’t and, and...”

“And?” Sophie prompts gently.

“How do I fix something like this?”

Thousands of miles away, sitting in a rocking chair inside her nice home, watching how the tiny fingers of her infant daughter curl around her pinky Sophie listens to her sister as she weeps and wails before she says quietly. “It’s not going to be easy, Min. You know that right?”

“I know.”

The infant in Sophie’s arms kicks her tiny little legs in tiny sharp motions, and she pulls her little tiny fist, still wrapped tightly around her mother’s finger to her mouth. Blindly rooting for a nipple and scrunching up her face in distress when she finds none to suckle. Her mouth opens in a soundless warning that she’s about to begin to fret and cry again as Sophie finishes her conversation with Minerva with a firm. “But a good first step would be for you to come home.”


End file.
